Volume No. 20 Issue No. 3 Oct., Nov., Dec., 2010 HOLIDAY MEMBERSHIP MEETING

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1 ANCIENT ECHOES ANCIENT ECHOES ANCIENT ECHOES Volume No. 20 Issue No. 3 Oct., Nov., Dec., 2010 HOLIDAY MEMBERSHIP MEETING December 2, Dinner, 6 PM; Speaker, 7PM In The Theater Of The Arizona Museum Of Natural History 35 N. Macdonald Street (Enter from First Street) It s hard to believe but December Holidays are fast approaching! Please mark your calendars and come celebrate with SWAT! Our members always provide a wonderful array of their favorite dishes. SWAT will provide the main dish of baked ham, drinks and tableware. Speaker for the evening s festivities will be Matthew Guebard. Matt will discuss the cliff dwelling and cavate architecture located in the Montezuma Castle National Monument boundary and throughout the Verde Valley. Matt will present specific case studies from National Park Service projects in the area that highlight new information on the study of the Montezuma Castle cliff dwelling and associated cavates. If you have wondered what is inside the walls of Montezuma Castle, you won t want to miss this presentation. Matt will take you inside this amazing structure using technology designed to document and plan preservation projects. Matt received his BA in Anthropology and Religious Studies from Butler University in Indianapolis, IN and a MA in Anthropology (emphasis in archaeology) from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Before working for the National Park Service, Matt had the opportunity to work at historic and prehistoric sites in the Aleutian Islands, Canada, China and the American Midwest. Matt began with the National Park Service in 2005 at Tonto National Monument. He specializes in the study and preservation of prehistoric architecture. Also In This Issue: Chair Chatter Keeping Up With SWAT Projects... 2 Museum Exhibits Two New Attractions For Visitors... 2 Toltec Schoolhouse Renovation Is Attracting Attention...3 Into The Paleo Pit Volunteers Contribute To New Exhibit... 4 Pueblo Grande Summer Cloudbursts Cause Damage... 4 City Of Mesa Projects Update On Two Surveys... 5 Students Get Inside View Johns Hopkins University Program... 5 Are You A Member? Memberships for 2011 Now Being Accepted... 6 Editor, Marie Britton (480) , mbrit@cox.net

2 Page 2 ANCIENT ECHOES Oct., Nov., Dec Chair Chatter Donna Benge Chairperson The days are getting cooler so it s perfect for being outdoors now. Get some cool fresh air by joining us on our Saturday projects. We ll be meeting on the first Saturday of each month at a schoolhouse site on Toltec Road in Eloy. The second Saturdays will find us at the milk barn at the Park of the Canals in Mesa, and on the third Saturday we ll be slinging mud at the mound at Pueblo Grande. In lab we ll be working on several projects so join us there too, on Wednesday evenings. And of course you will want to be a part of our annual potluck in December. If you haven t been able to be a part of any of the programs for awhile, now is the time to join in again! Just let Donna or Jim know that you are interested. Milk Barn Project This two room structure is located in the Park of the Canals in Mesa. Several pieces of the old metal have blown off the roof and subsequent rains have damaged the exposed purlins that support the metal sheets of roofing. Lumber and metal roofing have been purchased to repair the roof. We will be working at this site on November 13, replacing the missing metal and damaged wood. If you would like to help, please contact Donna at (480) or Jim at (480) for directions and starting time. SWAT Lab On Wednesday evenings at 7pm we re doing several projects in the Lab. We will be continuing to put the Rowley site artifacts in archival plastic bags. We ll also be analyzing sherds and lithics from the recent City of Mesa Cemetery excavation project as well as artifacts from Mesa Grande. If you have been unable to come for awhile or are interested in coming to learn about what we re doing, please don t hesitate to join us. Call Donna at to let us know that you will be coming. Arizona Museum of Natural History presents Two New Exhibitions! Lon Megargee: Legendary Prints of the Southwest Lon Megargee: Legendary Prints of the Southwest explores the work of famed Arizona artist Lon Megargee ( ). Megargee s work as a young man on a number of ranches around Arizona gave him firsthand experiences with subjects that he later immortalized in art. Perhaps best known for his murals at the Arizona State Capitol, Megargee also created paintings and prints of ranch life and cowboys, senioritas and vaqueros, broncos and longhorns, Pueblo and Plains Indians, coyotes and cactus. Arizona Republic art critic Richard Nilsen called Megargee s prints punchy, idiomatic and beautifully drawn, and noted how remarkable it is that a painter, known for his color, could also think so clearly in black and white. Arizona historian Marshall Trimble called Megargee Arizona s first cowboy artist, who deserves to be placed alongside the great western artists. In addition to prints, the exhibition includes major oil paintings and ephemera. Lon Megargee: Legendary Prints of the Southwest, from the collection of Abe Hays, will run through December 5. A catalogue, booklet and prints of two of the paintings are available in the bookstore. Study Ancient Animal Life in the New Paleo Pit! Discover the world of Paleontology in the Arizona Museum of Natural History s new Paleo Dig Pit. Paleontologists study ancient animal life and many dig up dinosaur bones. The new outdoor Paleo Dig Pit is located in a shaded, walled patio adjacent to the gold panning courtyard where visitors can sweep sand aside to reveal dinosaur tracks leading to a full-size Tyrannosaur skeleton, as well as numerous smaller marine fossils such as ammonites, trilobites and shells. Younger visitors will enjoy the Dino Nursery where they will uncover dinosaur eggs in their nest. In the outdoor Field Lab a wheelchair-accessible bench top T-bataar skull allows visitors to explore fossil preparation of a specimen after it has been extracted from the field. Specimens have been carefully modeled after the real fossils and mounted skeletons found elsewhere in the museum. Exploring the dig pit leads back to the museum to discover more information about the dig pit creatures when and where they lived, what they ate, and what they may have looked like.

3 Oct., Nov., Dec ANCIENT ECHOES Page 3 Our first session at the schoolhouse was in September. First the exterior and interior were photographed and these photographs have been filed along with the notes of what we did. Items which had been stored in the building had been removed along with the ceiling tiles. Our first task was to remove nails from the ceiling joists that had been used to attach the ceiling tiles. We then worked on removing lathe from the walls and frames from the windows in preparation for wall and window frame repair. Our next jobs will be to remove and then replace the exterior siding and build a new frame for a door which will need to be replaced. We ll also repair the windows and put in wall insulation and new interior sheetrock. The wainscoting will be sanded Above, work inside the Toltec Schoolhouse. Below, Kethleen Krider removing nails from lath. Photos by Donna Benge Toltec Schoolhouse Project History Shown in Black and White! Group Hopes restoring two old Toltec Schools turns back time before Arizona turns 100! (Article taken from the TriValley Dispatch, published Monday October 18, 2010 by Bill Coates) The old wood-frame schoolhouse off Toltec Road looked like an oversized tool shed. Dick Myers, an impromptu tour guide for the Dispatch, pointed out a few facts. It was built in 1928, along with a companion primary school. That was a larger wood-frame building, but it s no longer standing. Just a portion of the foundation remained. Black children attended one school, the smaller one still standing. The white and Hispanic children attended the other, said Myers, president of the Santa Cruz Valley Historic Museum Board. It was segregated from Day One, Myers said. Though segregation kept the kids apart in the classroom, they played together during recess. Years later, the U.S. Supreme Court would say separate was inherently unequal, but in Toltec there was a kind of equality. When recess ended students settled into their respective schools. The bigger one had a cafeteria. The smaller didn t. Still, they were each one room and made out of wood. That semblance of equality ended in 1930, when another school (still standing) was built on the same grounds. It is a high-ceilinged, brick, and varnished. Our next work days will be November 6 and December 4. If you are interested in helping, please contact Jim or Donna. We carpool from the Museum of Natural History leaving about daylight. two-room schoolhouse. The front has simple, elegant arches in the mission-style architecture of the day. The black children stayed in the one-room wood-frame structure. White and Hispanic children went to the new building, now known as the Old Toltec Primary School. That s all history now, a history Myers and his organization are looking to preserve. The 1930 school has qualified for the National Historic Registry. Both schools are listed on the State Historic Registry as Pinal 140. The old woodframed building is one of the few remaining colored schools from the era of segregation. Myers walked the Dispatch through what was once the playground. A stump of metal from an old tetherball pole and the flagpole were all that remained. He headed to the old wooden building. Neglect has dulled the exterior and taken its toll on the inside. The larger brick building has fallen on hard times as well. The museum board is looking to restore both as part of a museum. The old wooden schoolhouse is being restored to its original appearance. The 1930 school will be restored as well, much of it as the original school. It will also become the board s centerpiece museum on the history of cotton farming in the area.

4 Page 4 ANCIENT ECHOES Oct., Nov., Dec Exhibitions Crew Assists With Projects A number of SWAT members assist with museum projects in the Museum of Natural History workshop each Monday. Lately they have been preparing for the opening of a paleontology bone bed, a hands-on exhibit for children in the northeast museum patio. It opened to the public on October 15th. Bones of a Tyrannosaurus Rex were cast in concrete, and they along with other smaller fauna were embedded in concrete. Imprints of various ferns, leaves, and footprints were also put into the sections. A smaller area, called the kinder pit, for younger children is filled with concrete eggs and bones of baby dinosaurs. A table where jacketed concrete bones are located in a covered Photo by Jim Britton Above, Ed Mack painting the walls. Right, Concrete impressions are set. by Jim Britton The summer months were not too damaging to the platform mound and adjacent rooms. However, what rain we did have came in cloud bursts. The large volume of fast moving water across the mound top and down the slopes caused some damage to the structures. The summer rains, except for these cloud bursts, are normally not too damaging to the structures. Since the summer temperatures are usually hot, the moisture in the mud walls and in the ground dries rather rapidly. It is the winter rains that typically cause the most damage. Since the winter days are not hot, the moisture does not dry up fast and has time to be pulled up into the drier walls by capillary action. It is this slow drying The paleontology bone bed allows visitors to discover the past. Pueblo Grande Stabilization Photo by Donna Benge area for those unable to kneel down to brush away the dirt in the other areas (the dirt in this case is shredded rubber). A large electrical box was transformed by paintings into lockers for the paleontologists, and a patio with chairs and a rock wall were created for parents to sit and watch their children brush away the dirt to discover what is at the site. Jim Britton worked many hours constructing and painting the rock wall. The block walls enclosing the area were all painted by Ed Mack to resemble the surrounding desert. In the next few months crews will be working on three new exhibits so they will again be very Photo by Donna Benge busy fabricating parts for them. moisture and salt in the soil that breaks down the clay soil particles and causes basal erosion along the base of the walls. The PGM Mudslingers had work days in September and October. We worked both days repairing walls that had basal erosion damage. In October, the Pueblo Grande staff asked us to work there during the Native Foods and Crafts event. They wanted the public to see us in action and appreciate the work necessary to preserve this site. The work done by the Mudslingers is very important for this site to remain a destination point for local and out of town tourist. If you would like to join the Mudslingers, contact Jim Britton at (480) The next work days are Nov. 20 and Dec. 18.

5 Oct., Nov., Dec ANCIENT ECHOES Page 5 City of Mesa Archaeology Projects The McDowell and Recker Road Survey by Dr. Jerry Howard It always happens. As the summer months approach our beautiful spring weather suddenly turns on us. The heat flares and, inevitably, they send us out into the field. It never seems to fail. That is what happened this year as the city sent us out to do a survey of 135 acres of city owned land near McDowell and Recker that may someday soon be a city park. The project area was very interesting. This is an open expanse of desert with somewhat rugged terrain. It is located in east Mesa where the valley begins to rise into the skirt of the mountains to the east. Much of the area was bedrock covered by shallow layers of rock with little sediment or soil formation. The area lies east of the Hohokam canal systems, in an area where archaeological sites are typically gathering and resource procurement areas with very few residential sites. The area did contain evidence of resource procurement and other peripheral activities. The entire 135 acres was covered with a low density scatter of lithic artifacts; flakes, cores and primary flake tools making up the largest part of the assemblage. Some of the artifacts represented work areas where raw materials were gathered for use in stone tool production. They included chipping stations, areas where they found cores, the source material for making chipped stone. You could see where the knapper picked up a core and knocked flakes off of it, probably taking the useful flakes and leaving behind the waste material (debitage). Vesicular basalt, used for making manos and metates, also occurred naturally in some portions of the project area. Here we found large pieces of raw vesicular basalt that had been flaked to shape it into blanks from which manos and possibly metates could be made. Rock pile features were also found in the project area. Research by Paul and Susie Fish at the Arizona State Museum suggests that the rock was piled around the base of agave plants to act as mulch, keeping moisture in the ground around the plant. The rock piles occurred primarily within and along the margins of the local drainages where they could maximize available moisture. Linear rock features used as small dams across drainages to capture soil and water for agricultural crops were found in two locations. This is another example of agricultural use in this marginal environment. The results of the survey were interesting. What we appear to have is a cultural landscape in an area used to gather raw materials for stone tool production and where agave could be planted and survive on rainfall alone. In the future, we may be asked to return to the project area to study the archaeological material we recorded prior to development. It is certainly a very different type of archaeology than we see inside of the prehistoric canal systems where the large villages occur. Riverview Park Phase II Testing by Dr. Jerry Howard Apparently we know a good thing when we see it. Several years ago the museum had a crew in the field at the Riverview Development for over 14 months of fieldwork, excavating and recording prehistoric Hohokam canals. In 2008, we returned to the area to work in the northern half of Riverview Park where we tracked two of the large main canals. Now, the city is considering changes to the southern portion of Riverview Park and the museum has prepared an archaeological testing plan. Several of the large main canals found in the Riverview development to the east may swing through the new project area. The city is also considering an archaeological testing project for an adjacent area, the Riverview Golf Course. Our past work showed that the northern edge of the golf course follows the bank of the old Salt River channel. If we were to find a prehistoric main canal coming off of the river in this location, we would have a canal head! Given that no one since Omar Turney has ever seen a canal head (and he didn t take any pictures that have survived), this could be exciting!! Johns Hopkins University Program For Gifted And Talented Students On October 9th, students from California and Arizona took part in an archaeology program by the museum sponsored by Johns Hopkins University. About two dozen students and parents met at Mesa Grande in the morning to learn about excavation and stabilization where they were assisted by Jerry Howard and SWAT members, Jim Britton, Carla Booker, and Brian Medchill. They then went to the museum for lunch, and in the afternoon took part in lab sessions directed by Donna Benge where they learned about Hohokam pottery and analyzed sherds from a prehistoric site. From there they were given tours of the museum. As a part of their tour, Ruth Teller demonstrated cotton spinning. Photo by Donna Benge

6 Renew Early For 2011! Become Part Of SWAT! If you have not joined the yet, we invite you to do so memberships being accepted now. Name: Address: City: State: Zip: Phone: Date Sent: q New Membership q Renewal Membership q $20 - Family Membership q $15 - Single or Individual Membership q $10 - Student Membership This is a: Return to: P.O. Box 5368, Mesa, AZ Southwest Archaeology Team SWAT, Inc., PO Box 5368, Mesa, AZ Officers Chairperson Donna Benge (480) Vice-Chairperson Sylvia Lesko (480) Secretary Richard Brown (480) Treasurer Jim Britton (480) Directors Carla Booker (480) Joe Burkett (480) Alex Howard (480) Kathleen Krider (480) Bert Strobl (480) Southwest Archaeology Team Arizona Museum of Natural History 53 N. Macdonald St. Mesa. AZ Ancient Echoes is the newsletter of the Southwest Archaeology Team, which is in a cooperative agreement with the Arizona Museum of Natural History Address Correction Requested